WASHINGTON (CNS)—Dale Recinella played the financing game like a
fiddle, even working through Christmas one year to secure the complex
arrangements to finance a new stadium for football's Miami Dolphins.

Yet he turned his back on the twin rushes of high pay and high power to
minister to some of the most downtrodden: poor people with HIV and AIDS,
and eventually prisoners on death row.

Recinella chronicled his journey in a new book, "Now I Walk on Death
Row." "The book is not so much about the death penalty than it is about
seeking the answer to the question: Did Jesus mean what he said?"
Recinella told Catholic News Service in a recent telephone interview
from his job in northern Florida, where he works part time to support
his wife and family.

One similarity to his high-flying corporate career: He's got a window
office. "And right outside are the garbage cans," Recinella said with a
laugh.

As a volunteer chaplain, he ministers on death row three days each week,
all day Mondays at a death-row prison in the Sunshine State and part of
the day Wednesdays and some Saturdays. He gives religious education
instruction Wednesday nights at Union Correctional Institution near
Raiford, Fla.

"Wednesday, everybody goes to church at night except the Catholics,"
Recinella said. He teaches inmates about "living Gospel values
authentically in our lives and in situations we encounter day in and day
out. We have 110 inmates. ... They change over every year. It is an
extremely valuable program. Those (in the program) who are released have
a much better chance of making it."

Recinella, who has written the "Respect Life" column for the Florida
Catholic string of diocesan newspapers for the past 11 years, is now an
opponent of the death penalty but had long been unaware of the
inconsistency in his position on life issues.

"Even as a teenager and a college student, I was very active in
right-to-life, but I also strongly supported capital punishment," he
told CNS. "I had no clue that our bishops had already come out and asked
us to stop using capital punishment, and I kind of stumbled into that
awareness in the late 1980s and early '90s.

"And through my church and through assisting the Florida Catholic
Conference in Tallahassee by drafting some amicus briefs on death
penalty cases, I came to understand the church's teaching on the death
penalty, so by the time I got to death row I had already changed my mind
on the death penalty because of my faith."

He added, "Reason dictates against this practice. So faith and reason come together."

Recinella suggested life imprisonment without parole as an alternative
to capital punishment. "What people do not realize is that, through
politically motivated expansions of the death penalty, we have plenty of
people (on death row) who never intended to kill anyone," he said.

"All the studies show that life in prison without the possibility of
parole is much cheaper than getting to an execution. The difference is
who the money goes to. With life in prison, the money goes to
corrections officers. With the death penalty, the money goes to lawyers
on both sides. Correction officers' uniforms are much cheaper than
Brooks Brother suits."

Recinella also stays on top of death penalty issues, including the Troy
Davis case decided by the Supreme Court March 28, the day before the CNS
interview. The high court rejected Davis' final appeal for a chance to
prove his innocence in the 1989 murder of a police officer in Savannah,
Ga.

"One of the most startling issues in the Troy Davis case is the question
of whether or not innocence matters in the American death penalty,"
Recinella said. "And the tension is between the desire for closure on
cases, and the danger of executing the innocent."

Recinella reflected on the seemingly sudden change in his career path.
"My lawyerly training trained me to fix things," he said. "What I
learned in this journey is that my wife and my children did not want to
so much to be fixed; they wanted to know that I cared for them. And that
means time. I came to think that time means money, and one of the
things that God has shaken me out of is that time is a gift, and time is
the most precious gift I can give."

The family, children included, discusses and prays over career, income
and lifestyle changes until everyone is on board. Recinella and his
wife, Susan, even sponsored one man he had ministered to in prison when
he was released on parole after serving 25 years for murder. The man,
identified in the book only as "Kenny," works as a sexton for a
nondenominational ministry and is engaged to a woman he met since his
release.

Recinella said his editor at Chosen Books, a Protestant publisher, asked
him to write "Now I Walk on Death Row," but informed him most of its
readers were "primarily non-Catholic Christians. ... I'd like you to
bring them along with you, but in a way that they will be very
comfortable going along with you."

"If this had been a Catholic publisher, I certainly would have spent
more time on the role of daily Mass in our life when were going through
those changes, (and) about the role of eucharistic adoration in which we
included our children," Recinella said.

He has used the title "Now I Walk on Death Row" for talks he has given
over the years about his prison ministry. It has led to confusion as to
whether Recinella himself was—or is —a convict.

"A few years ago I was speaking at a 'Theology on Tap' on the death
penalty for the Notre Dame Alumni Club in Orlando," he said. "The
posters were up and I went to the barkeep and I told him I was the
fellow who was speaking, and he looked at me with absolute disdain and
said, 'I can't believe they let somebody like you out to give talks.'
After we cleared it up, he was much warmer toward me."